One Honest Indie

“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

  • Home
  • About Me
    • Privacy Policy
    • GDPR Privacy Policy
  • What is Dystonia?
  • My Novels and Short Fiction
    • The Sam McRae Mystery Series
      • Identity Crisis
      • Least Wanted
      • Riptide
      • Deep Six
      • Law Can Be Murder
    • The Erica Jensen Mysteries
    • My Other Novels
      • Invisible Me
      • The Planck Factor
    • Short Stories
  • For Writers
    • Indie Publishing
    • Blogging
    • Screenwriting
    • Writing Advice
    • Marketing
  • Podcasting
  • Hang Onto Your Work-Life
    • Frugal Living
    • Health and Wellness
    • Recipes
    • Organizing
    • Photography
    • Travel
  • Online Courses
    • Learning for Life
  • Book Reviews
  • Food for Thought
    • Bits and Bobs
  • Videography
    • My Videos
  • Contact Me

The ‘No B.S. Guide’ to Self-Publishing — Part Eight

12/13/2022 by Debbi

Image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay

So … we’ve finally arrived at the part where we talk about audiobooks! A great way to get your work out, especially if you’re good at reading your own work (which I’m not particularly, though I could probably do my own nonfiction audiobooks, at this point—hmm … just a thought!). If you hire a narrator, that gets more expensive. In fact, a lot more expensive, depending on whether you revenue share with your narrator or not. But we’ll get to that part.

Yeah, so. Here we go!

Audiobooks

At the moment, audiobooks are the hot, new, sexy format everyone says is big, big, big. Maybe it is. But they are much more expensive and time-consuming to create than ebooks or even print books.

They generally involve collaboration, for one thing. You, as the author and publisher, are responsible for picking the right narrator. And to find one that’s just right and within your price range may be tough. It requires thought, people skills, and patience.

However, if you want to make audiobooks a significant part of your product line (and always remember, that’s what your books are—a product), here’s what you should know about the platforms.

I suppose the major platform is ACX, which is owned by Amazon and sells audiobooks through Audible. For publishing purposes, here’s where you go to set up an ACX account: https://www.acx.com/

When you create an audiobook there, you’ll need to decide whether to be exclusive to ACX or not. If you’re exclusive, you’ll get a 40% royalty and giveaway codes. If you’re not exclusive, you get a 25% royalty, no giveaway codes, and a swift kick in the ass out the door. However, more authors are finding out that it’s a good idea to take the 25% royalty and distribute those audiobooks around through other channels.

The two options I use are Findaway Voices (which works in association with Draft2Digital) and Author’s Republic.

You can set up an account with Findaway Voices here: https://my.findawayvoices.com/login

And the same for Author’s Republic here: https://authorsrepublic.com/

Along with deciding whether to be exclusive to Amazon/Audible or go wide, you’ll need to decide whether to share part of your royalties with the narrator or pay the full price for their services up front. I’d advise you to think long-term on this. And keep things like this in mind. (And note the year this was published: 2013! Also, click on that little orange rectangle on the side. Patreon. Yeah, that’s the next step. Or one of them.)

No matter where you are in your writing career, remember the words of William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.” So, ignore about 90% of what you hear you’re “supposed to do” and use the 10% you manage to find. The bottom line is, good writing will always get noticed, if you play your cards right, market and get good word of mouth, but that’s just my opinion.

And it’s never too late to get started. But you do need to get started.

Hi, it’s me. 🙂

#  # #

Debbi Mack is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sam McRae mystery series, featuring her lawyer protagonist Stephanie Ann “Sam” McRae. In addition, she’s written a standalone thriller and a middle-grade/young adult novel. Her short story “The Right to Remain Silent” was nominated for a Derringer Award in 2010. Debbi’s short stories have appeared in various anthologies and online publications.

In 2020, Debbi released Damaged Goods, the Shamus-nominated first book in her new Erica Jensen mystery series about a female Marine veteran sleuth. The sequel, Fatal Connections, came out in 2022. She also hosts her own podcast, the Crime Cafe, where she interviews other crime, suspense, and thriller authors. In addition, Debbi’s a screenwriter and minor-league videographer. A retired attorney, Debbi has also worked as a journalist, librarian and freelance writer/researcher. You can find her online here: https://linktr.ee/debbimack. 🙂

# # #

And back to my self-publishing story next week! 🙂 How exciting, huh?

 

The ‘No B.S. Guide’ to Self-Publishing — Part Seven

11/29/2022 by Debbi

Image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay

Ebooks

Amazon

When it comes to ebooks, Amazon has been and continues to be the undisputed king of ebook sales. You’ll sell more downloads there than anywhere else on the Internet. At least, I guess you still can. There are actually books I’ve sold through other retailers that are not selling at all on Amazon. I have no idea why. In any case, you can create an account to publish on their digital text platform here: https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin.

When you sign up with Amazon, you have a choice between joining KDP Select (publishing only on Amazon) or staying completely indie.  Choosing to be Amazon exclusive (available on Amazon only) or uploading your work to other publishing platforms. The exclusivity period runs for 90 days at a time, with the option to re-up as often or not as you choose.

However, don’t limit yourself to Amazon. When I first self-published, Amazon was the only game in town. Now authors and readers have other options.

You can publish directly to different retailers or use a distribution service.

Continue Reading

More Thoughts About Seth Godin’s Blog – Part 3

10/04/2022 by Debbi

Photo by Rebe Pascual on Unsplash

I suppose my thoughts about Seth Godin’s blog posts amount to a kind of web series, don’t they? There’s a theme and a continuing series of posts, so … I guess. 🙂

Anyhow, here’s what I’ve got today.

Continue Reading

My Book Review of ‘Direct’

09/20/2022 by Debbi

Hi! Today, I’m reviewing Direct. I’m just gonna go ahead and tell you about this book in general, because I didn’t read it entirely from front to back all the way through, because essentially it’s preaching to the choir at this point. I mean, I agree with everything that’s in here pretty much. And I primarily wanted to read this to get to the potential solutions to the problem, the problem, of course, being the middleman that we are always dealing with now. And we are just so used to it that we don’t even think about it anymore. It’s just what we do. And I’ll just read you this one part. She talks about how … the author is Kathryn Judge, and she talks about how Amazon was built on the Walmart model of selling things to sheep cheap.

Continue Reading

Next Page »

Meet Debbi

Welcome to my writers' corner of the Internet. I'm a novelist, who also writes short stories and screenplays. I hope to share the benefit of my experiences as an indie author with dystonia since 2009. I also post a lot of book reviews, because I love to read and learn new things. I hope to share that knowledge with you.

Click on the cover for a free copy!

Try My Online Courses

I'm posting writing and other courses online at Creative Living! 

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Follow

Categories

  • Accountability
  • Accountability
  • Announcement
  • Bits and Bobs
  • Blogging
  • Book Reviews
  • Creative Entrepreneurship
  • Film Review
  • Food for Thought
  • For Writers
  • Frugal Living
  • Fundraising
  • Hang Onto Your Work-Life
  • Health and Wellness
  • Indie Author Guide
  • Indie Publishing
  • Law for Writers
  • Learning for Life
  • Life Update
  • Marketing
  • Memoirs
  • My Story
  • My Videos
  • Online Courses
  • Online Marketing
  • Organizing
  • Photography
  • Podcasting
  • Poetry
  • Print Publishing
  • Producing
  • Random Thoughts
  • Recipes
  • Screenwriting
  • Serialized content
  • Social Media
  • Summaries
  • Tech Talk
  • Towel Day
  • Travel
  • Videography
  • Vlog
  • Writing Advice

Tags

Amwriting Authorpreneurs Blogging Book Publishing Book Review Book Reviews BookTube Branding Content Marketing Crime Fiction Dystonia Entrepreneurship Fiction Filmmaking Food for Thought Health History How-To Indie Authors Indie Publishing Inspiration Marketing Memoirs Mindfulness Nonfiction Online Marketing Organizing Productivity Productivity Random Crap Random Thoughts Recommended Reading Self-Care Self-Publishing Self-Publishing Guide Seth Godin Social Media Travel Video Videos Vlog Wellness Writing Writing Tips YouTube

Grow Your Readership with BookSweeps

Support Indie Bookstores

indiebound

Recent Posts

  • My Own Self-Publishing Journey — Part Four
  • When Opportunity Knocks …
  • My Book Review of ‘Online Marketing for Busy Authors’
  • My Book Review of ‘Crowdsourcing for Filmmakers’
  • My Own Self-Publishing Journey — Part Three

Recommended Web Services

Build Your Website with Namecheap - Get Privacy Protection Free Forever

Web Hosting

Monthly Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in